direction

Led by the Desires of Our
Hearts?

By
Craig von BuseckCBN.com Contributing Writer

CBN.com
--The psalmist wrote, May He grant you according to your heart's desire,
and fulfill all your purpose (Psalm 20:4).

The Lord gives us some wonderful promises in His Word concerning the desire
of our hearts. One of the most striking is found in Psalm 37:

Trust in the LORD, and do good; Dwell in the land, and feed on
His faithfulness. Delight yourself also in the LORD, and He shall give you
the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the LORD, trust also in Him,
and He shall bring it to pass. (Verses 3-5).

Just like an earthly father who delights in providing his children with the
things that they write on their Christmas list, our heavenly Father delights
in giving us the things we desire -- but not all of them.

There are times when we desire something that seems good to us, but from
God's point of view it would not result in our ultimate good.

Our Father in heaven truly knows what is best for our lives. There are times
when we want certain things that He knows would be a hindrance to us. My dad
often tells the story of an interview he once watched with a world-class pianist.
The reporter remarked that he would love to be able to play the piano as well
as this man did. With a slight smirk, the musician replied, "No you wouldn't."

The reporter was shocked. "What do you mean?" he asked.

"To be as good as me you would have had to have begun studying piano
not long after you learned to walk. When your friends were out playing games,
you would be inside playing your scales. You would have to play for eight
hours every day, and then perform nearly every night. You would have to travel
around the world, moving from one hotel to another. You would be constantly
lonely, not being able to maintain long-term relationships. No, you wouldn't
want to be as good as I am."

There is such a thing as a divine rejection. There are times when we cry
out to God, Lord, this is the desire of my heart! Please give it to me,"
but the Father knows that the thing that we want so badly is actually bait
on a sharp hook. If we were to swallow that bait, it would take us to places
we did not want to go. In His great love for us, God may withhold certain
things to protect us.

In other cases, there are things we desire that may not be at all harmful,
but the Lord will keep them from us because He has something even better in
mind for us. How many of us have prayed to be in a certain job, or marry a
certain person, or receive a certain material blessing, only to realize later
that that job, or person, or thing was not all that we thought it was! Many
times, when the Lord has withheld something from me, I have later come to
realize that it was for my protection and my long-term good. It is always
best to pray that God's will would be done!

Death of the Vision

It is also important to realize that sometimes the Lord will plant His desires
in our heart and then cause those desires to grow so that we will seek Him.
And at some point in the process, He may require that we surrender those dreams
back to Him. This is called "dying to the vision," and it is a test
that the Lord will often put His children through to determine their love
for Him.

God may promise something to us and place a desire for it in our heart, and
then require the very thing from us that He had promised. With Abraham, God
promised him an heir in his old age. The birth of this baby brought so much
joy to Abraham and Sarah that they named him Isaac, which actually means laughter.
But when Isaac was a teenager, the Lord tested Abraham's faith by asking him
to offer Isaac as a sacrifice to God. In obedience Abraham built an altar,
placed the wood in position, bound the hands of his son, and laid him on it.
Just as he raised the knife to slay his son, the angel of the Lord stopped
him. God provided a ram, caught in the thicket, for Abraham to sacrifice to
the Lord instead of his son (see Genesis 22).

If we will die to the vision that is in our heart, and allow the Lord to
have everything in our lives, He will not only give us that thing that He
promised, but it will be better than we could have ever imagined in our own
minds.

The great holocaust survivor Corrie Ten Boom often spoke these words of wisdom,
"Hold loosely to the things of this life, so that if God requires them
of you, it will be easy to let them go."

God will give us the desires of our heart, but the first desire of our heart
should be to serve Christ Himself. When we have Christ as our chief desire,
all of the other desires of our heart will be submitted to His lordship, and
we can willingly pray, 'Not my will, but Thine be done.' When that happens,
God will give us our hearts' desire, which will also be His desire for us!

What is in Your Hand?

Often God will use different circumstances to lead you in life. Sometimes
He won't reveal certain things to you until you need to know them -- for many
different reasons. At other times, the Lord will conceal His direction because
He knows that if He revealed it to you, and you knew what was to come, you
wouldn't go down that path -- but that is exactly the direction that He intends
for your life.

When things don't seem to be working out, or you're having a hard time,
it is not always because you're out of the will of God. It may be that you are
directly in the will of God, and He is controlling the circumstances of your
life to bring about His purpose for you. In these times you must remain prayerful,
and consider the combination of ways that He is guiding you through your personal
relationship with Him, and through the other seven keys to hearing God's voice.

There are thousands of Christians who are wasting their lives, waiting for
God to make clear to them their calling. God has given them the Scripture,
which reveals God's general will for all believers. In that alone, they can
see that the Lord does not want them to bury their talents but to use them
to His glory. When Moses was questioning God in front of the burning bush,
he said, "Suppose they will not believe me or listen to my voice?"
(Exodus 4:1). The Lord replied to him, "What is that in your hand?"
(verse 2). Of course, we know that what was in Moses' hand was the rod that
the Lord used as an instrument to demonstrate His power.

The Lord is asking you today, "What is that in your hand?" You
may have read in the Bible that the Lord has a unique calling for your life.
You may have heard some specific direction from the Lord concerning that calling,
but you still are waiting for it to happen in your life. I ask you today,
"What is that in your hand?" Do what is in your hand to do. Move
forward in faith in the things that you have heard from the Lord, and God
will meet you where you are. Like Peter in the boat on that stormy night,
you may have heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Come out on the water."
You have to make a decision to lift your foot over the edge of that boat and
step out, trusting that you have heard His voice, and keeping your eyes on
Him in the midst of the storm.

God will provide you with the grace and strength that you need to get it
done, but you must take that first step in obeying His will for your life.